| Search | About | Preferences | Interact | Help | |
| 150 million books. 1 search engine. | ||
› Find signed collectible books: 'America'
France's leading philosopher of postmodernism takes to the freeways of the New World. Baudrillard assembles images of light, distance, endless horizontal circulation, political indifference and, above all, simulation. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business'
A brilliant powerful and important book....This is a brutal indictment Postman has laid down and, so far as I can see, an irrefutable one. --Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World. [via]
More editions of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women'
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women's movement, she writes, "stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's positions have actually led to their downfall." Meticulously researched, Faludi's contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction. [via]
More editions of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Baffler: Number 10'
More editions of The Baffler: Number 10:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine'
More editions of Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Black Looks: Race and Representation'
More editions of Black Looks: Race and Representation:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community'
Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified and describes in this brilliant volume, "Bowling Alone."
Drawing on vast new data from the Roper Social and Political Trends and the DDB Needham Life Style -- surveys that report in detail on Americans' changing behavior over the past twenty-five years -- Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and social structures, whether the PTA, church, recreation clubs, political parties, or bowling leagues. Our shrinking access to the "social capital" that is the reward of communal activity and community sharing is a serious threat to our civic and personal health.
Putnam's groundbreaking work shows how social bonds are the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction. For example, he reports that getting married is the equivalent of quadrupling your income and attending a club meeting regularly is the equivalent of doubling your income. The loss of social capital is felt in critical ways: Communities with less social capital have lower educational performance and more teen pregnancy, child suicide, low birth weight, and prenatal mortality. Social capital is also a strong predictor of crime rates and other measures of neighborhood quality of life, as it is of our health: In quantitative terms, if you both smoke and belong to no groups, it's a close call as to which is the riskier behavior.
A hundred years ago, at the turn of the last century, America's stock of social capital was at an ebb, reduced by urbanization, industrialization, and vast immigration thatuprooted Americans from their friends, social institutions, and families, a situation similar to today's. Faced with this challenge, the country righted itself. Within a few decades, a range of organizations was created, from the Red Cross, Boy Scouts, and YWCA to Hadassah and the Knights of Columbus and the Urban League. With these and many more cooperative societies we rebuilt our social capital.
We can learn from the experience of those decades, Putnam writes, as we work to rebuild our eroded social capital. It won't happen without the concerted creativity and energy of Americans nationwide.
Like defining works from the past that have endured -- such as "The Lonely Crowd" and "The Affluent Society" -- and like C. Wright Mills, Richard Hofstadter, Betty Friedan, David Riesman, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Theodore Roszak, Putnam has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do. [via]
More editions of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Brave New World Revisited'
When the novel Brave New World first appeared in 1932, its shocking analysis of a scientific dictatorship seemed a projection into the remote future.
Here, in one of the most important and fascinating books of his career, Aldous Huxley uses his tremendous knowledge of human relations to compare the modern-day world with his prophetic fantasy. He scrutinizes threats to humanity, such as overpopulation, propaganda, and chemical persuasion, and explains why we have found it virtually impossible to avoid them. Brave New World Revisited is a trenchant plea that humankind should educate itself for freedom before it is too late.
[via]More editions of Brave New World Revisited:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future'
The problem with the world today, says Neil Postman, is that we've become so caught up in hurtling towards the future that we've lost our societal "narrative," a humane cultural tradition that creates "a sense of purpose and continuity"--in other words, something to believe in. "In order to have an agreeable encounter with the twenty-first century," he asserts, "we will have to take into it some good ideas. And in order to do that, we need to look back to take stock of the good ideas available to us." He finds rich source material in the Enlightenment, the salad days for philosophers such as Goethe, Voltaire, Diderot, Paine, and Jefferson, "the beginnings of much that is worthwhile about the modern world." Yet Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century is a call for cultural progress, not regression: "I am not suggesting that we become the eighteenth century," Postman notes, "only that we use it for what it is worth and all it is worth."
Chief among the values Postman cites is the development of the intellect; it plays a part in many of his recommendations, from the cultivation of a healthy skepticism towards overhyped technology to sweeping educational reforms that include replacing grammar instruction with logic and rhetoric and introducing courses on comparative religion and the history of science. He also lashes out at postmodernists who start with the premise that language "is a major factor in producing our perceptions, judgments, knowledge, and institutions" and conclude that language is therefore tenuously connected to reality at best. Enlightenment thinkers knew that language molded perception, he notes, but they also believed that "it is possible to use language to say things about the world that are true" and "to communicate ideas to oneself and to others." Postman is excessively curmudgeonly at times, as in his reference to philosopher Jean Baudrillard as "a Frenchman, of all things," or his remarks on the ancient Athenians: "I know they are the classic example of Dead White Males, but we should probably listen to them anyway." But for anybody with a stake in the culture wars, or who wants to apply the lessons of philosophy to the modern world, Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century will make for provocative reading. [via]
More editions of Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Christianity and Culture'
More editions of Christianity and Culture:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Closing of the American Mind'
THE BRILLIANT AND CONTROVERSIAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN CULTURE WITH NEARLY A MILLION COPIES IN PRINT
In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites.
Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Blooms argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today. [via]
More editions of The Closing of the American Mind:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Closing of the American Mind/How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students'
THE BRILLIANT AND CONTROVERSIAL CRITIQUE OF AMERICAN CULTURE WITH NEARLY A MILLION COPIES IN PRINT In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind , an appraisal of contemporary America that "hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy" ( The New York Times ) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom's argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today. [via]
More editions of The Closing of the American Mind/How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students:

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change'
The Condition of Postmodernity is David Harvey's seminal history of this, our most equivocal of eras. What does postmodernism mean? Where did it come from? Harvey, a Professor of Geography, and a key mover behind extending the scope and influence of the discipline of geography itself, does a thorough job here delineating the passage through to postmodernity and the economic, social and political changes that underscored and accompanied it. As he clearly states, the rise in postmodernist cultural forms is related to a new intensity in what Harvey terms "time-space compression" but this new intensity is a qualitive and not a quantitive change in social organisation and does not point to a era beyond capitalism as "the basic rules of capitalistic accumulation" remain unchanged. Unlike Fredric Jameson (whose equally rewarding Postmodernism stands as the twin pillar to Harvey's critique), who explicitly relies on Ernest Mandel's periodisation of Late Capitalism, Harvey eschews a narrowly economic focus, the limits and contradictions of production that have led to the rise in the service sector, and takes a more multidisciplinary approach to his history: as comfortable discussing Manet as he is labour markets. Harvey is an excellent writer and The Condition of Postmodernity is an exceptionally informative and enjoyable read. Mark Thwaite [via]
More editions of The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Culture and Imperialism'
Edward Said makes one of the strongest cases ever for the aphorism, "the pen is mightier than the sword." This is a brilliant work of literary criticism that essentially becomes political science. Culture and Imperialism demonstrates that Western imperialism's most effective tools for dominating other cultures have been literary in nature as much as political and economic. He traces the themes of 19th- and 20th-century Western fiction and contemporary mass media as weapons of conquest and also brilliantly analyzes the rise of oppositional indigenous voices in the literatures of the "colonies." Said would argue that it's no mere coincidence that it was a Victorian Englishman, Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton, who coined the phrase "the pen is mightier . . ." Very highly recommended for anyone who wants to understand how cultures are dominated by words, as well as how cultures can be liberated by resuscitating old voices or creating new voices for new times. [via]
More editions of Culture and Imperialism:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America'
This New York Times bestseller ignited national debate when it was released in hardcover. Now in paperback, Culture of Complaint is a brilliant, passionate examination of multiculturalism in America today, and what Robert Hughes sees as its devastating effects on the nation. "Exhilarating".-- Newsweek [via]
More editions of Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations'
When The Culture of Narcissism was first published, it was clear that Christopher Lasch had identified something important: what was happening to American society in the wake of the decline of the family over the last century.
The book quickly became a bestseller. This edition includes a new afterword, "The Culture of Narcissism Revisited." [via]More editions of Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Culture We Deserve'
Twelve essays exploring aspects of literacy and art criticism, retrospective sociology and the effects of relativism on moral behavior. [via]
More editions of The Culture We Deserve:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Culture We Deserve: A Critique of Disenlightenment'
Twelve essays exploring aspects of literacy and art criticism, retrospective sociology and the effects of relativism on moral behavior. [via]
More editions of The Culture We Deserve: A Critique of Disenlightenment:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Cultures of United States Imperialism'
Contributors. Lynda Boose, Mary Yoko Brannen, Bill Brown, William Cain, Eric Cheyfitz, Vicente Diaz, Frederick Errington, Kevin Gaines, Deborah Gewertz, Donna Haraway, Susan Jeffords, Myra Jehlen, Amy Kaplan, Eric Lott, Walter Benn Michaels, Donald E. Pease, Vicente Rafael, Michael Rogin, José David Saldívar, Richard Slotkin, Doris Sommer, Gauri Viswanathan, Priscilla Wald, Kenneth Warren, Christopher P. Wilson
More editions of Cultures of United States Imperialism:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'
This celebrated work is the keystone of the thought of the Frankfurt School. It is a wide-ranging philosophical and psychological critique of the Western categories of reason and nature, from Homer to Nietzsche. "A classic of twentieth-century thought". TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. [via]
More editions of Dialectic of Enlightenment:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments'
More editions of Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Dialektik Der Aufklarung: Philosophische Fragmente'
More editions of Dialektik Der Aufklarung: Philosophische Fragmente:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School'
In this comprehensive response to the education crisis, the author of Teaching as a Subversive Activity returns to the subject that established his reputation as one of our most insightful social critics. Postman presents useful models with which schools can restore a sense of purpose, tolerance, and a respect for learning. [via]
More editions of The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Faith in Fakes: Essays'
More editions of Faith in Fakes: Essays:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Fast Food Nation'
On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.
Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed [via]
More editions of Fast Food Nation:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal'
On any given day, one out of four Americans opts for a quick and cheap meal at a fast-food restaurant, without giving either its speed or its thriftiness a second thought. Fast food is so ubiquitous that it now seems as American, and harmless, as apple pie. But the industry's drive for consolidation, homogenization, and speed has radically transformed America's diet, landscape, economy, and workforce, often in insidiously destructive ways. Eric Schlosser, an award-winning journalist, opens his ambitious and ultimately devastating exposé with an introduction to the iconoclasts and high school dropouts, such as Harlan Sanders and the McDonald brothers, who first applied the principles of a factory assembly line to a commercial kitchen. Quickly, however, he moves behind the counter with the overworked and underpaid teenage workers, onto the factory farms where the potatoes and beef are grown, and into the slaughterhouses run by giant meatpacking corporations. Schlosser wants you to know why those French fries taste so good (with a visit to the world's largest flavor company) and "what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns." Eater beware: forget your concerns about cholesterol, there is--literally--feces in your meat.
Schlosser's investigation reaches its frightening peak in the meatpacking plants as he reveals the almost complete lack of federal oversight of a seemingly lawless industry. His searing portrayal of the industry is disturbingly similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, written in 1906: nightmare working conditions, union busting, and unsanitary practices that introduce E. coli and other pathogens into restaurants, public schools, and homes. Almost as disturbing is his description of how the industry "both feeds and feeds off the young," insinuating itself into all aspects of children's lives, even the pages of their school books, while leaving them prone to obesity and disease. Fortunately, Schlosser offers some eminently practical remedies. "Eating in the United States should no longer be a form of high-risk behavior," he writes. Where to begin? Ask yourself, is the true cost of having it "your way" really worth it? --Lesley Reed [via]
More editions of Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal:
› Find signed collectible books: 'From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life'
At the outset of Jacques Barzun's colossal book From Dawn to Decadence 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, the author admits that when asked by friends how long he has been writing his book, he can only answer--a lifetime. The book is worth the wait for its extraordinary energy and intellectual range. Barzun begins by arguing that "by tracing in broad outline the evolution of art, science, religion, philosophy and social though during the last 500 years, I hope to show that during this span the peoples of the West offered the world a set of ideas and institutions not found earlier elsewhere." In the process Barzun adroitly guides the reader from Luther's Ninety-five Theses and the religious revolution of the 16th century, through what he calls "the monarchical, liberal and social" revolutions of the subsequent 400 years that have shaped the culture of the modern Western world. All of Western life and thought can be found somewhere in From Dawn to Decadence. Portraits of Martin Luther, Shakespeare, Descartes, Florence Nightingale and James Joyce jostle alongside snapshots of cities at turning points in history--"The View from Venice Around 1650", "The View from Paris Around 1830", and finally "A View from New York Around 1995". Barzun's central argument is that "after a time, the Western mind was set upon by a blight: it was Boredom." This does lead Barzun to some more curmudgeonly comments towards the end of the book, where he deals with the cultural exhaustion of the last decades of the 20th century, but over 800 pages he offers more than enough insight into an incredible sweep of history to make this a riveting and rewarding book. --Jerry Brotton [via]
More editions of From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life:
› Find signed collectible books: 'From Dawn to Decadence : 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present'
In the last half-millennium, as the noted cultural critic and historian Jacques Barzun observes, great revolutions have swept the Western world. Each has brought profound change--for instance, the remaking of the commercial and social worlds wrought by the rise of Protestantism and by the decline of hereditary monarchies. And each, Barzun hints, is too little studied or appreciated today, in a time he does not hesitate to label as decadent.
To leaf through Barzun's sweeping, densely detailed but lightly written survey of the last 500 years is to ride a whirlwind of world-changing events. Barzun ponders, for instance, the tumultuous political climate of Renaissance Italy, which yielded mayhem and chaos, but also the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo--and, he adds, the scientific foundations for today's consumer culture of boom boxes and rollerblades. He considers the 16th-century varieties of religious experimentation that arose in the wake of Martin Luther's 95 theses, some of which led to the repression of individual personality, others of which might easily have come from the "Me Decade." Along the way, he offers a miniature history of the detective novel, defends Surrealism from its detractors, and derides the rise of professional sports, packing in a wealth of learned and often barbed asides.
Never shy of controversy, Barzun writes from a generally conservative position; he insists on the importance of moral values, celebrates the historical contributions of Christopher Columbus, and twits the academic practitioners of political correctness. Whether accepting of those views or not, even the most casual reader will find much that is new or little-explored in this attractive venture into cultural history. --Gregory McNamee [via]
More editions of From Dawn to Decadence : 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Illuminations'
Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history.
Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin's life in dark times. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times. [via]
More editions of Illuminations:
› Find signed collectible books: 'A Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works'
Collected for the first time in one volume are 80 of Barzun's most accomplished essays. The list of subjects covered has an amazing range: history, philosophy, literature, education, music and more. [via]
More editions of A Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Leisure: The Basis of Culture'
One of the most important philosophy titles published in the twentieth century, Joseph Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture is more significant, even more crucial than it was when it first appeared fifty years ago.
Pieper shows that Greeks understood and valued leisure, as did the medieval Europeans. He points out that religion can be born only in leisure-a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. He maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for nonactivity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture-and ourselves. These astonishing essays contradict all our pragmatic and puritanical conceptions about labor and leisure; Joseph Pieper demolishes the twentieth-century cult of "work" as he predicts its destructive consequences. [via]
More editions of Leisure: The Basis of Culture:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Leisure: The Basis of Culture'
Modern Political Philosophy [via]
More editions of Leisure: The Basis of Culture:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mythologies'
L'Antiquité avait son Oedipe, le Grand Siècle son roi Soleil, et voilà que Barthes donne à la France de l'après-guerre ses nouveaux emblèmes : la DS Citroën, le Tour de France, le steak frites... Tous objets d'un culte bourgeois, ils deviennent de véritables mythes pour une société qui finit par se penser à travers eux. Mais si Barthes se penche avec la rigueur de l'ethnologue sur ces nouveaux mythes, c'est pour mieux en dénoncer les mécanismes : l'idéologie dominante ne s'inventerait ainsi des valeurs que pour légitimer des "normes bourgeoises" qui en manquent singulièrement...
Écrites quotidiennement de 1954 à 1956, ces mythologies déploient une écriture fine, cultivée et juste, à lire comme autant de petites chroniques savoureuses. Toutefois, on les retiendra avant tout pour l'actualité de leurs propos : sur le même modèle, on trouverait sans peine de nouvelles mythologies, qui ne seraient sans doute pas très éloignées de celles que Barthes, en son temps, mettait en évidence. --Karla Manuele [via]
More editions of Mythologies:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mythologies'
More editions of Mythologies:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America'
Essayist and cultural critic Barbara Ehrenreich has always specialized in turning received wisdom on its head with intelligence, clarity, and verve. With some 12 million women being pushed into the labor market by welfare reform, she decided to do some good old-fashioned journalism and find out just how they were going to survive on the wages of the unskilled--at $6 to $7 an hour, only half of what is considered a living wage. So she did what millions of Americans do, she looked for a job and a place to live, worked that job, and tried to make ends meet.
As a waitress in Florida, where her name is suddenly transposed to "girl," trailer trash becomes a demographic category to aspire to with rent at $675 per month. In Maine, where she ends up working as both a cleaning woman and a nursing home assistant, she must first fill out endless pre-employment tests with trick questions such as "Some people work better when they're a little bit high." In Minnesota, she works at Wal-Mart under the repressive surveillance of men and women whose job it is to monitor her behavior for signs of sloth, theft, drug abuse, or worse. She even gets to experience the humiliation of the urine test.
So, do the poor have survival strategies unknown to the middle class? And did Ehrenreich feel the "bracing psychological effects of getting out of the house, as promised by the wonks who brought us welfare reform?" Nah. Even in her best-case scenario, with all the advantages of education, health, a car, and money for first month's rent, she has to work two jobs, seven days a week, and still almost winds up in a shelter. As Ehrenreich points out with her potent combination of humor and outrage, the laws of supply and demand have been reversed. Rental prices skyrocket, but wages never rise. Rather, jobs are so cheap as measured by the pay that workers are encouraged to take as many as they can. Behind those trademark Wal-Mart vests, it turns out, are the borderline homeless. With her characteristic wry wit and her unabashedly liberal bent, Ehrenreich brings the invisible poor out of hiding and, in the process, the world they inhabit--where civil liberties are often ignored and hard work fails to live up to its reputation as the ticket out of poverty. --Lesley Reed [via]
More editions of Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America:
› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: El Poder De Las Marcas'
More editions of No Logo: El Poder De Las Marcas:
› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: No Space No Choice No Jobs'
With a new Afterword to the 2002 edition, No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing-and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement. As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe-witness today's schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy-a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald's workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how "culture jammers" utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in "Joe Chemo" for "Joe Camel"). No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing. "This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable."-Naomi Klein, from her Introduction [via]
More editions of No Logo: No Space No Choice No Jobs:
› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies'
We live in an era where image is nearly everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds." Brand identities are even flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."
In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step, how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the street but increasingly in the schools as well. (The controversy over advertiser-sponsored Channel One may be old hat, but many readers will be surprised to learn about ads in school lavatories and exclusive concessions in school cafeterias.) The global companies claim to support diversity, but their version of "corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against Blockbuster's policies, given that they're both divisions of Viacom?
Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running, most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its clerks a "living wage," wrote that "while the concept is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment." Those clerks should probably just be grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring "permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any, benefits like health care, paid vacations, or stock options. While many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation," observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such policies make it increasingly difficult to organize workers and advocate for change.
But resistance is growing, and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programs have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made you. We can break you." But there's more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert." No Logo is a comprehensive account of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place to thwart it. --Ron Hogan [via]
More editions of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies:
› Find signed collectible books: 'On Photography'
Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism (1977), this is "a brilliant analysis of the profound changes photographic images have made in our way of looking of the world and ourselves over the lost 140 years."-Washington Post BOOK WORLD [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Orientalism'
For generations now, Edward W. Said's "Orientalism" has defined our understanding of colonialism and empire, and this "Penguin Modern Classics" edition contains a preface written by Said shortly before his death in 2003. In this highly-acclaimed work, Edward Said surveys the history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East, considering orientalism as a powerful European ideological creation - a way for writers, philosophers and colonial administrators to deal with the 'otherness' of eastern culture, customs and beliefs. He traces this view through the writings of Homer, Nerval and Flaubert, Disraeli and Kipling, whose imaginative depictions have greatly contributed to the West's romantic and exotic picture of the Orient. Drawing on his own experiences as an Arab Palestinian living in the West, Said examines how these ideas can be a reflection of European imperialism and racism. Edward W. Said (1935-2003) was a Palestinian-American cultural critic and author, born in Jerusalem and educated in Egypt and the United States. His other books include "The Question of Palestine", "Culture and Imperialism" and "Out of Place: A Memoir". If you enjoyed "Orientalism", you might like Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth", also available in "Penguin Modern Classics". "Stimulating, elegant and pugnacious". ("Observer"). "Beautifully patterned and passionately argued". ("New Statesman"). "Very exciting ...his case is not merely persuasive, but conclusive". (John Leonard, "New York Times"). "Magisterial". (Terry Eagleton). [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to English And American Literature'
Kantor takes readers on a fascinating tour through great literature in all its politically incorrect glory. She includes a syllabus and a guide to the English literature education most people were denied in school. [via]
More editions of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English And American Literature:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays'
A collection of twenty of Paglia's out-spoken essays on contemporary issues in America's ongoing cultural debate such as Anita Hill, Robert Mapplethorpe, the beauty myth, and the decline of education in America. [via]
More editions of Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology'
Neil Postman is one of the most level-headed analysts of education, media, and technology, and in this book he spells out the increasing dependence upon technology, numerical quantification, and misappropriation of "Scientism" to all human affairs. No simple technophobe, Postman argues insightfully and writes with a stylistic flair, profound sense of humor, and love of language increasingly rare in our hastily scribbled e-mail-saturated world. [via]
More editions of Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Television and the Teaching of English'
More editions of Television and the Teaching of English:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Travels in Hyperreality: Essays'
More editions of Travels in Hyperreality: Essays:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Vamps and Tramps: New Essays'
The bestselling author of Sexual Personae and Sex, Art, and American Culture is back with a fiery new collection of essays on everything from art and celebrity to gay activism, Lorena Bobbitt to Bill and Hillary. These essays have never appeared in book form, and many will be appearing in print for the first time. [via]
More editions of Vamps and Tramps: New Essays:
› Find signed collectible books: 'The White Album'
This collection of essays recounts what took place on the long morning after the 1960s, when everyone was coming down from their particular bad trip. Didion observes the dramas that explode as America goes into collective detox: the mother abandoning her five-year-old daughter on the central reservation of Interstate 5; Huey Newton and the Black Panthers preaching from their cells; students, in unconscious parody, simulating the disaffection of the 1960s. Didion hangs out with the Doors, parties with Janis Joplin, shops with the Manson clan, dines with Polanski and Sharon Tate, and goes to biker movies, "because there on the screen was some news I was not getting from the 'New York Times'". Joan Didion has also written "Sentimental Journeys" and "Slouching Towards Bethlehem". [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Yearning Race Gender and Culture: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics'
More editions of Yearning Race Gender and Culture: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics'
More editions of Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics:

› Find signed collectible books: 'Algo supuestamente divertido que nunca volvere a hacer'
More editions of Algo supuestamente divertido que nunca volvere a hacer:
› Find signed collectible books: 'El Medio Es El Masaje/ The Media is the Massage: Un Inventario De Efectos/ an Inventory of Effects'
More editions of El Medio Es El Masaje/ The Media is the Massage: Un Inventario De Efectos/ an Inventory of Effects:
› Find signed collectible books: 'No Logo: El Poder de Las Marcas'
More editions of No Logo: El Poder de Las Marcas:
› Find signed collectible books: 'Illuminationen: Ausgew. Schriften'
More editions of Illuminationen: Ausgew. Schriften:
